Pepper, the humanoid robot, isn’t shy.
“I’m very happy you are all here today,” the robot said to a crowd at English High School in Boston Monday.
Pepper dances, gives high fives and fist bumps to anyone who asks, does tai chi, and looks people in the face when they are speaking. The 4-foot-tall robot is a product of Softbank Robotics America, a company that has donated robots to district high schools with computer science programs in Boston, San Francisco, and British...

More from Northern Virginia
More from Northern Virginia
Growing up, Shontya Washington watched her father code and fell in love with computers.
She recalls sitting at her father's feet, drawing on dot matrix paper as he problem-solved on the old machines. Now as a software engineer, she wants to help kids in Frederick County, Va. see where coding can take them.
The Frederick County school board representative for the Redbud district says science, technology, engineering, and math--known as STEM-- teaches kids critical...

Photo Credit: Root Robotics
Is it a toy? A tiny Roomba? Nope, it’s better (especially if you have kids).
The Root (available on Amazon for $179) is an educational robot that teaches coding, creativity and problem-solving skills to kids from pre-readers through high school.
Lift or drop a marker into the hole in the center of Root, and it can create unique artwork. It comes with a whiteboard surface you can put on a table, but it also works on vertical whiteboards that...

Fourth Graders from Mrs. Stacy Watson’s Class (KTVO).jpg
Macon, Mo. —
Fourth grade students at Macon Elementary School are learning how to code – using robots.
But, they say it’s so fun – it’s more like playing a game.
In Mrs. Meisner’s Library Technology class, students as young as first grade are learning coding.
“I think I learned how to type in eighth grade, so it’s kind of crazy that I have first graders on the iPads working with ScratchJR and coding, so it’s...

If there's one thing that both the Trump and Obama White Houses agree upon, it's the importance of computer science education for children in America. Because of how digitally entrenched the world is getting, coding skills (at least at a basic level) are becoming nearly as essential as reading, writing, and math.
I've taught computer programming at the college level for decades. When I ask my students why they're in my course, the number one reason (pretty much the only reason)...

Carmen Alexa, left, and Lily Dalstra celebrate their success with their Ozobot
Kennen Claus’ favorite part about Ozobot robots is the “party time” programming available for students after they complete a weekly challenge.
“After we cross the finish line, we can make them talk, play music and spin around in crazy, crazy circles,” Kennen said. “One time we swirled it right off the table.”
The programming experience comes courtesy of the Grandville Education Foundation, which granted Mary VanderMeer $1,199 to purchase 12 Ozobots...

New elementary club focuses on robotics, programming
Although students at all four Albert Lea Area Schools elementaries are working with dashes and dots, it’s not Morse code they’re learning.
Instead, media specialists are leading the Dash and Dot coding clubs, named after the robots they are using to teach children the basics of computer programming.
“We’ve just been really trying to encourage students to get into computer programming and coding,” Lakeview and Sibley elementary schools media specialist Kristen Seeger said — they are...